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Jacques Soustelle was born in Montpellier, into a Protestant working-class family. A brilliant high school student, he was admitted at the first place at the École Normale Supérieure de la rue d'Ulm, which is still the ultimate college within the French educational system (many Nobel Prize winners and Fields Medalists are among its alumni). At the age of 20, he was admitted at the first place at the competitive exam of agrégation de philosophie (high-level grade for teaching). An anti-fascist, he was general-secretary in 1935 of the French Union of Intellectuals against Fascism.

In 1945, he served first as Minister of Information, then as Minister of the Colonies. From 1947 to 1951, he served as Secretary General of the Gaullist party Rassemblement du Peuple Français (RPF) and was one De Gaulle's closest counsellors.

Though he believed he would become Algeria Secretary, Soustelle was only named Information Minister in June 1958. In 1959, he was appointed Minister of State in charge of Overseas Departments by De Gaulle. He miraculously was unharmed after three Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) terrorists attempted to assassinate him by shooting his car on the Place de l'Étoile in Paris. He got from De Gaulle a presidential pardon for the only attacker who had been arrested and sentenced to death. Soustelle disagreed with De Gaulle's sudden turn for Algerian independence. He has analyzed this turnaround in his book L'Espérance Trahie (Broken Hope). Soustelle was dismissed from the cabinet and the Gaullist party Union pour la nouvelle République (UNR) in 1960 and joined the terrorist Organisation de l'armée secrète (OAS) in the fight against the independence of Algeria. When the OAS was replaced by the Conseil National de la Résistance (CNR), he joined this new organization as one the heads (around Georges Bidault, former President of the World War II National Council of the Resistance). His activities led him to being sued for attempting to undermine the authority of the French state. He lived in exile between 1961 and his 1968 amnesty.